RAGE Gameplay Performance and Image Quality @ [H]

Screw Carmack for writing another game engine for Nvidia cards only. Money back for AMD GPU users campaign, INITIATE!
 
darkstarcow said:
Following this logic, in order to be a "real" driver, you do not test drive a vehicle or read reviews on it before you buy it.
In order to be a "real" home buyer, you do not look at, or read about, the house you are signing for before you buy it.
In order to be a "real" consumer, you have to buy things without looking at what they are made of....
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No, you're saying the exact opposite of what he said
 
Just a quick note about the grey texture lines - that only happens when AF is set too high. In this game, the engine only calculates to 4x precision. So if you force a higher value, those annoying lines are the result. Just set the control panel for your drivers to let the game decide and you will have much improved visual quality. At least that did the trick for me on my ATI 6950 setup.
 
Dead Island was hardly trouble free though either, I know a lot of people who had some severe problems with the game, so opinions do vary. There have been a lot of disappointing games in 2011 - agreed about id and AMD. If it was their way, the game wouldn't even launch on AMD hardware.
 
Don't know what you found in your testing but as far as I'm concerned since the last patch gpu transcoding has been disabled.

Prior to the patch I had disabled sli and dedicated my gpu2 to cuda and disabed it on gpu1.
I was seeing some use from my second card which was continually showing 20 -30% activity as it actively transcoded textures.....since the patch it has been totally dead flatlining?

"IF" gpu transcodeing is still working then I guess they must have forced it on to gpu1 as its defo not doing anything on my second card anymore??
 
The fact that we even have a game on the PC is thanks in no small part to nVidia going in house and putting in the time to get this running on PCs.
Of course that rules out support for AMD cards, but hey most PC gamers should probably boycott this title. Those with AMD cards must boycott this title.
 
Despite the fact it's a shooter, it's even tempting to ebay a copy of it for the 360 in a year or so's time once it's cheap and play it that way, seems preferable to playing this PC version.
 
I bought the game so i could make form own opinion. I waited after ATI released preview drivers and ID released a patch. Been enjoying it a lot actually! Some of the textures are ugly for sure, but game play is pretty solid in my opinion.
 
The game is quite awesome. I think most people are "jumping on the RAGE hate bandwagon" for whatever flimsy excuse possible (that is, those who have not played it).

If someone has tried/played it and still hated it, then that's fine; entertainment is subjective at best.
 
I still don't like the console version. I watched my friend play it on his PS3, and every time he stopped, the texturing acted like a jpg being loaded. The texture would look blurry, and then slowly load the higher quality texture.

For this review on the PC is very saddening. I figured, at least it has to be better than the console version. Not much better.
 
Nobody here is saying the gameplay itself is bad, they're just commenting on the technical aspect, which is undeniably dire.
 
In reference to the 'odd discolored lines that appear on objects, terrain, and people.' I was getting these due to AF being forced in the NVCP. (Sharps97 beat me too this, oops)

I'm quite enjoying this game so far, while the textures are being rightly panned, the geometry (world not character), lighting and animation are very nicely done and the enemies seem relatively dynamic in when they attack, hold position and retreat. It's not an amazing game but its only £30 (~<$40) over here, so I can't complain.
 
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samuelmorris said:
Nobody here is saying the gameplay itself is bad, they're just commenting on the technical aspect, which is undeniably dire.
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Many people are saying "Rage sucks" based on the technical issues, without having actually played it.
 
Zero82z said:
Many people are saying "Rage sucks" based on the technical issues, without having actually played it.
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Actually I'm more disappointed with what I've seen of the gameplay than the technical issues. At least the technical issues can be improved upon over time... the lack of imagination and monotony that seems evident in the gameplay is why I won't even buy this game when it's a $5 bargain bin special 6 months from now.
 
Zero82z said:
Many people are saying "Rage sucks" based on the technical issues, without having actually played it.
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Reading about the technical issues, seeing them in a review and in videos, is enough for me to know what a sloppy piece of shit id gave the people they owe everything to. So I can say without playing it that there is no excuse for this game to be so unpolished especially for the PC other than the company sold out. I don't give my money to companies I've historically supported that sold out.

Sometimes you don't need to hold a turd in your hand, smash it, & smell it to know it's a turd.
 
Didn't Carmack saying PC was leading edge not too long ago. How dollar signs change opinions. So much for Carmack PC king.
 
All I can say is I think Rage is good, not a great game. It's biggest issue is the drivers. I have a Nvidia 480GTX, and it runs fine, but with the 280.26 WHQL drivers only. I tried the latest beta 285.38 drivers and I all of a sudden had every issue everyone was complaining about so I went back to 280.26 WHQL and it's fine again. I know everyone here loves to use the latest and greatest drivers, but the latest is not necessarily the best. Who cares if the latest "beta" drivers give you better frame rates but give you significantly lower image quality with rendering errors for that frame rate bump.

From my experience with Rage and the WHQL driver vs latest Beta, you are doing yourself a huge disservice and lowering the game image quality by using the latest beta. The latest beta does seem to feel a little faster in terms of FPS but the IQ and render errors it produces makes it the worse choice to use with this game.

I can understand people's frustration though, a good portion of the preorder people probably installed the latest beta drivers on the 26th of September when Nvidia released them cause it says it "Improves performance and compatibility in id Software’s RAGE." then they get garbage image quality when the game gets released on October 4th. The people who were saying it's not that bad on my machine, were probably people like me who don't use the latest beta drivers unless they ran into an issue. Rage ran fine for me when I got it, I only decided to try out the beta to see if it really improved anything but to my surprise it made everything worse so I went back.
 
The two companies that IMO revolutionized pc gaming in the 90's, epic games and id software, now favoring consoles. Sad.
 
I've known that there was a fair bit of anti-fanboyism against id at the top here, I hadn't realized the extent to which this was true until Rage launch day when there was what felt like 8 posts about how much Kyle hates rage. Now I realize many of these games you people play have plenty of emotion tied up them, but that doesn't mean that whenever id launches a game you have to abandon all pretense of professionalism and descend into a self-righteous circlejerk.
 
Sharps97 said:
Just a quick note about the grey texture lines - that only happens when AF is set too high. In this game, the engine only calculates to 4x precision. So if you force a higher value, those annoying lines are the result. Just set the control panel for your drivers to let the game decide and you will have much improved visual quality. At least that did the trick for me on my ATI 6950 setup.
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Good info. Some people seem to enjoy the game, so I'd like to try it out around the half-price mark or so.
 
yes these screens were the first time I saw the gray lines... surprised hardocp didn't seem to know or care to look into fixing that...
 
I've said this before, on the first page......

I thought the game was/is fun to play. I enjoyed it, much more than Dead Island, it is not the same as DeusEx, but that game also has some texture issues.

I never had any problems running the game on my hardware. Yes, the textures at times are really bad, and the dull green color of the backgrounds in areas really cheapens the game.

Now......if I offered you a market opportunity where you could sell your products, and make quadruple your expected income from your usual market, would you take me up on it?
id and epic and everybody else is no different from any other business.....they aren't working for fun, they are working for profits....

I do not like the fact that my market segment gets an inferior product most times because of it, but I understand the dynamic.:)
 
magoo said:
I've said this before, on the first page......

I thought the game was/is fun to play. I enjoyed it, much more than Dead Island, it is not the same as DeusEx, but that game also has some texture issues.

I never had any problems running the game on my hardware. Yes, the textures at times are really bad, and the dull green color of the backgrounds in areas really cheapens the game.

Now......if I offered you a market opportunity where you could sell your products, and make quadruple your expected income from your usual market, would you take me up on it?
id and epic and everybody else is no different from any other business.....they aren't working for fun, they are working for profits....

I do not like the fact that my market segment gets an inferior product most times because of it, but I understand the dynamic.:)
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The point of comments like Kyle's conclusion is, you shouldn't settle and just sit back and accept that dynamic. Basically, PC gamers are a cash cow, albeit, not as big of one as the console market. When you buy console ports that are shitty, you're basically saying to game companies that you're willing to buy console ports that are shitty.

So, when all you get is console ports that are shitty, then that shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.

It's a direct effect of voting with your wallet. The virtual checkout lines and the RL checkout lines are where you cast your ballots.
 
magoo said:
Now......if I offered you a market opportunity where you could sell your products, and make quadruple your expected income from your usual market, would you take me up on it?
id and epic and everybody else is no different from any other business.....they aren't working for fun, they are working for profits....

I do not like the fact that my market segment gets an inferior product most times because of it, but I understand the dynamic.:)
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It's just short sighted to do that though. Everyone is crippling their games on PC by catering to the lowest common denominator, the underpowered consoles of our present day.

Here's how you make your cake, eat it, and then screw it too... *Don't ask me why you'd want to screw your cake after eating it. If you don't already know you're too dumb to understand the rest of my post anyway. :p*

Develop for the most powerful platform available at the time. Period. Port to everything else under the sun, but get that shit looking and playing amazingly on the most powerful hardware out there, whatever it may be. Make EVERYONE want to sell their firstborn in order to play your game on the lead platform, each, and every release. This will drive sales, make other platforms advance faster (think Xbox 720 and PS4 coming out 2 years ago instead of 2 years from now), make the tech industry in general more competitive, spur innovation and an economic recovery to get us out of recession. Booyah. Games and country FIXED! Vote for me, 2012... before the world ends.
 
nanotube said:
The two companies that IMO revolutionized pc gaming in the 90's, epic games and id software, now favoring consoles. Sad.
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Because there wasn't an FPS market on consoles. Now there is (a huge one, too), and consoles are powerful enough to provide solid graphics. It's not sad. In fact, what would be sad is a developer pouring 1-2 years into a game only to see it undersell because he optimized it for a niche platform. Even worse if it's a great game, and it gets pirated to hell and back on that platform.

As I understand it, the technology behind Rage was designed to take advantage of consoles' strengths. This is so core to the game that changing for the PC would be unfeasible (read: very time consuming and expensive). I understand everyone's disappointment (I am too, though I never expected the game to be extraordinary), but let's not kid ourselves, high-end PCs are a niche platform and they will continue to be.

Lesson learned: Never, ever, ever preorder games unless it's absolutely necessary. If it's on Steam, it's not necessary.
 
mdk30 said:
It's just short sighted to do that though. Everyone is crippling their games on PC by catering to the lowest common denominator, the underpowered consoles of our present day.
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Unfortunately, developing for PCs means catering to the lowest common denominator as well. Not everyone has a Radeon 6000 series (or even an nVidia 8800). Some PCs have single-core, many dual-core, and many quad-core. Some have 2GB RAM, others have 12. Most are laptops.

Even when PCs were the top platform, very few games were optimized for top specs. Catering to the lowest common denominator has always been a problem, except now we have a simple, convenient scapegoat.

mdk30 said:
Here's how you make your cake, eat it, and then screw it too... *Don't ask me why you'd want to screw your cake after eating it. If you don't already know you're too dumb to understand the rest of my post anyway. :p*

Develop for the most powerful platform available at the time. Period. Port to everything else under the sun, but get that shit looking and playing amazingly on the most powerful hardware out there, whatever it may be.
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So much more difficult than you think. A game begins development 12-18 months before it's released, at least. On top of that, many games use existing engines.

mdk30 said:
Make EVERYONE want to sell their firstborn in order to play your game on the lead platform, each, and every release. This will drive sales, make other platforms advance faster (think Xbox 720 and PS4 coming out 2 years ago instead of 2 years from now), make the tech industry in general more competitive, spur innovation and an economic recovery to get us out of recession. Booyah. Games and country FIXED! Vote for me, 2012... before the world ends.
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Well now you're being silly. I'd vote for ya though.:p
 
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I keep reading that if you want to use the Large 8K textures, that you need a 1GB + GPU. For me, @1080p with Large textures, GPU transcode, and 4x AA on, my GPU was only using around 550-600MB according to GPUz. My GTX 460 768 was consistent 60FPS, and never dropped a frame bellow that while I was watching FPS for awhile.
 
badpool said:
So much more difficult that you think. A game begins development 12-18 months before it's released, at least. On top of that, many games use existing engines.


Well now you're being silly. I'd vote for ya though.:p
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But you have to ask why so many games use the same engines. I'm not arguing the fact that it makes a lot of sense from a purely business perspective to keep cranking out Modern Warfare games (as just one example) on an engine that has barely advanced at all in years. There's still a lot of money to be made without needing to invest in new technology. I get it.

I simply believe that an alternative business strategy that could be just as, if not more successful than that, would be to actually make that investment in furthering the tech, and spurring the entire industry forward at the same time. I mean instead of needing to replace my 360 on three separate occasions now (because they keep dying), just to stream Netflix on it at this point... I'd much rather have been on my second Xbox 720 at this point and be playing games on it for the past 2 years that look just as good if not better than BF3... while also playing games on my PC that would make PC BF3 look like... well, release day RAGE being played through VNC on my old Droid X.
 
bigdogchris said:
I keep reading that if you want to use the Large 8K textures, that you need a 1GB + GPU. For me, @1080p with Large textures, GPU transcode, and 4x AA on, my GPU was only using around 550-600MB according to GPUz. My GTX 460 768 was consistent 60FPS, and never dropped a frame bellow that while I was watching FPS for awhile.
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Something to do with the way the game runs. I have mine tweaked to show max eye candy (16x and 8x + large textures, etc) at 5980x1080 on three GTX 580's 3GB versions that are water cooled and over clocked as well as being pushed by a oc'd 990X @ 4.6Ghz and I get a solid 60FPS no matter what, it never moves up or down. Watching the OSD while running EVGA's Precision, I was able to see my GPU's used 2,500MB of VRAM solid on all three GPU's.
 
kn00tcn said:
how can a site like hardocp not mention the fact that triple buffering is lacking? there are 100s of dx games (& even apps like d3doverrider) that work just fine with vsync without dropping to 30fps

also megatextures appeared in ETQW first, tech4




barely any titles exist, only doom3 & quake4 which are quite similar
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Yeah they just drop to 45 fps instead...

whoopdy doo.
 
Demos are out of fashion. If you make a shit game and release a demo, people will realise it's bad and not buy it. When you know a game is likely to bomb you don't advertise that fact.
 
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